Buying an Apartment in Tokyo: Real Prices and Costs 2026

What an apartment in Tokyo actually costs in 2026

Two prices circulate in Tokyo, and they tell different stories. One is the price actually agreed, recorded by the inter-agency network; the other is the price asked by sellers on the Japanese portals. In 2026 the gap between them is the widest it has been, and understanding it is the first step before setting a budget.

Prices actually paid

The Higashi Nihon Fudosan Ryutsu Kiko (東日本不動産流通機構, the official Kanto transaction register known as REINS) publishes concluded sale prices, the joyaku kakaku (成約価格), every quarter. For second-hand apartments, the chuko manshon (中古mansion (condominium)), in the first quarter of 2026:

Area	Price per m2 agreed	Year on year	Average price	Average size	Average age
Tokyo, 23 wards	¥1,379,600 (€8,516)	+12.1%	¥79.41M (€490,185)	57.6 m2	25.9 years
Tokyo prefecture	¥1,219,600 (€7,528)	+10.8%	¥72.42M (€447,037)	59.4 m2	26.2 years
Greater Tokyo (Kanto)	¥862,600 (€5,325)	+8.1%	¥54.92M (€339,012)	63.7 m2	27.1 years

Two benchmarks are worth memorising: the price per square metre in the 23 wards has risen for 53 consecutive quarters, without interruption since early 2013, and Greater Tokyo has moved past its 1990 bubble peak of ¥832,000 per m². This is not a few hot months, it is a thirteen-year cycle. We put it in historical context in our piece on Japan's 1991 property bubble.

Asking prices, and the portal trap

Tokyo Kantei measures something else: what sellers ask, normalised to a standard 70 m² unit. February 2026 reading:

Sector	Asking price for 70 m2	Year on year
Core, six central wards (Chiyoda, Chuo, Minato, Shinjuku, Bunkyo, Shibuya)	¥187.6M (€1,158,025)	+24.2%
South-west, six wards (including Shinagawa, Meguro, Setagaya)	¥100.9M (€622,840)	+25.5%
North-east, eleven wards (including Toshima, Taito, Kita, Sumida)	¥79.1M (€488,272)	+29.8%
All 23 wards	¥123.5M (€762,346)	+35.2%

Asking prices are rising faster than agreed prices. For a buyer that means the listed stock runs ahead of the market, and that negotiation is real. A unit sitting online for three months at an unchanged price is telling you something. To read those listings properly, our guide to reading a Japanese property listing decodes line by line what the seller writes and what is left unsaid.

Why Tokyo rises while Japan shrinks

As of 1 January 2026 the 23 wards hold 9,796,723 residents, up 0.68% in a year, while the country as a whole loses population every year. Residential land follows: up 13.0% in the five central wards and 8.5% across the other eighteen. That is the structural fact that justifies paying more for Tokyo than anywhere else in Japan, and we set it out in Japan's demographics and its property market.

What each budget bracket really buys

An average price tells you nothing about what you can buy. The table below turns each bracket into a real product, using REINS agreed prices, Tokyo Kantei asking prices, and a listing survey we ran across the 23 wards on 13 August 2026.

Budget (before fees)	What it buys in Tokyo	Where
Under ¥25M (€154,000)	A 20 to 25 m2 studio, reinforced concrete, built in the 1980s, within a ten minute walk of a station	North and east: Kita, Adachi, Katsushika, Edogawa, Itabashi
¥25M to ¥40M (€154,000 to €247,000)	A 25 to 40 m2 studio or 1LDK from the 1990s or 2000s, or an older unit in a better location	Toshima, Nakano, Sumida, Arakawa, outer west
¥40M to ¥60M (€247,000 to €370,000)	A 45 to 60 m2 two-room unit you can actually live in as a couple, or a recent 1LDK	The eleven north-eastern wards, Koto, Ota
¥60M to ¥90M (€370,000 to €556,000)	The average 23-ward transaction: 57.6 m2 for ¥79.41M, a genuine family home	Residential west: Suginami, Setagaya, Nerima, Shinagawa
¥90M to ¥150M (€556,000 to €926,000)	70 m2 at the average 23-ward asking price (¥123.5M), or a recent well-located unit	South-west, edge of the core, second-ring towers
Above ¥150M (above €926,000)	The six central wards, where 70 m2 is asked at ¥187.6M, and most tower units	Chiyoda, Minato, Chuo, Shibuya

The affordable segment exists, but it is not a family home

Our 13 August 2026 survey counted 1,723 apartment listings across the 23 wards, of which 592 were under ¥35M and within a ten minute walk of a station. Reading 200 of those listings one by one, 22.5% were built in 1990 or later. The median profile of that sample is unambiguous: 24.2 m², built in 1984, ¥19,800,000 (€122,222), concrete structure in 96% of cases.

In other words, entry-level Tokyo is an investment studio, the same product Japanese investors buy. It is not a family holiday flat, and you should know that before building a plan around that budget. If space matters more than the address, the space-to-price ratio swings sharply in favour of the rest of the country: our Japanese house listings show that ¥25M buys a whole house with a garden in most prefectures, and our Tokyo property page puts the capital's entry ticket next to the other markets we track.

Pick the ward after the budget, not before

Once the bracket is fixed, only two or three wards remain in play. That is when the detailed comparison earns its keep: our article on Tokyo's 23 wards and their 2026 land prices gives the official price per square metre, the annual increase, the population and the local short-stay rules for each one. And within a single ward, the station decides: our study of buying near a Yamanote line station shows that the gap between a four and an eighteen minute walk often exceeds the gap between two wards.

Total cost: the asking price plus 6% at most

Closing costs, the shohiyo (misc. -hi用), never exceed 6% of the price in Japan, and often fall below 5% on an expensive unit, because several taxes are computed on the assessed value rather than the price paid. That is far less than in most of Europe. Here are the six line items, applied to a ¥42M (€259,259) apartment of 45 m² built in 1998, bought to let by a non-resident.

Item	Basis	Amount on ¥42M	When
Agency commission (chukai tesuryo)	3% of price + ¥60,000, plus 10% consumption tax	¥1,452,000 (€8,963)	At settlement
Stamp duty (inshi-zei)	Reduced scale, contract of ¥10M to ¥50M	¥10,000 (€62)	At signature
Registration tax (toroku menkyo-zei)	2% of assessed value, full rate outside owner occupation	about ¥280,000 (€1,728)	At settlement
Judicial scrivener (shiho shoshi)	Fixed fee of the land registration lawyer	¥100,000 to ¥150,000 (€617 to €926)	At settlement
Fire and earthquake insurance	Five-year policy, concrete building	about ¥70,000 (€432)	At settlement
Property tax proration (seisan-kin)	Share of the current year	about ¥64,000 (€395)	At settlement
Subtotal at settlement		about ¥2,006,000 (€12,383), or 4.8%
Acquisition tax (fudosan shutoku-zei)	3% of assessed value, land base halved	about ¥300,000 (€1,852)	3 to 6 months later
Total including the deferred tax		about ¥2,306,000 (€14,235), or 5.5%

The line everyone forgets

The acquisition tax arrives by post three to six months after completion, once the buyer has closed the spreadsheet and assumes the bill is settled. It comes from the prefecture, it is not collected by the agency, and nobody will remind you. On our example it is ¥300,000. Budget for it, and budget for the fact that it arrives in Japanese, at the Japanese address of the property: with no one on the ground, the notice can sit in a letterbox. That is exactly what a tax representative in Japan is for.

Why the assessed value changes everything

The kotei shisan-zei hyoka-gaku (kotei shisan-zei hyōka-gaku, assessed value for tax purposes) is the base for acquisition tax, registration tax and the annual taxes. On an older apartment it commonly sits around a third of the market price, because the book value of the structure collapses with age. The counter-intuitive consequence is that the older the apartment, the lighter its taxes, at equal price. The underlying mechanism is explained in why Japanese houses lose their value, and the line-by-line detail sits in our article on Japanese property purchase costs.

What the apartment costs you every year

In Tokyo, the running cost of a condominium weighs more than the tax bill. Two charges are owed monthly by the owner, never by the tenant.

• Management fees, kanrihi (kanri-hi): cleaning, lifts, common areas, caretaker, managing agent.
• The repair reserve, shuzen tsumitatekin (shūzen tsumitatekin): the collective fund for the major works cycle every 12 to 15 years.

According to the national condominium survey run by the Ministry of Land, the Japanese average is roughly ¥11,500 in management fees and ¥13,000 in reserve contributions per unit per month. In Tokyo, on a 45 m² apartment, expect closer to ¥24,000 a month for the two combined. The table below sets out the full annual cost of our ¥42M example.

Annual item	Amount	Equivalent
Management fees and repair reserve	¥288,000	€1,778
Fixed asset tax and city planning tax (1.4% and 0.3% of assessed value)	about ¥129,000	€796
Delegated letting management (about 8% of rent, tax included)	about ¥125,000	€772
Insurance, spread over five years	¥14,000	€86
Turnover allowance between tenants	¥60,000	€370
Total	about ¥616,000	€3,802

The reserve fund is the real risk, not the tax

The same ministry survey finds that 36.6% of Japanese condominiums are under-funded against their own long-term works plan, and that the recommended per-square-metre scale was raised by about 50% in 2024 to follow construction costs. A building with unusually low charges is not a bargain: it is announcing a future increase, or a special levy. Before you offer, ask for the minutes of the last general meeting and the long-term works plan. Our article on Japanese condominium charges explains how to read both, and our yield simulator lets you test what a charge increase does to your return before you commit.

The yield, honestly

Back to the example. Assuming a rent of ¥130,000 a month for this 45 m² unit (a working assumption to verify property by property, not a statistic), annual rent reaches ¥1,560,000, a gross yield of 3.7%. After 5% vacancy and the ¥616,000 of annual costs above, roughly ¥866,000 remains before tax, or 2.0% net on the price and 1.9% on the capital actually deployed.

That number is not an accident, it is the nature of Tokyo. You buy liquidity, a rising population and an easy resale, not yield. Yields of 6 to 7% do exist in Japan, but elsewhere, as our city-by-city return comparison shows. If cash flow is your first objective, read our analysis of real Tokyo yields before settling on the capital.

New build or second hand: the choice that moves the price most

At equal size and address, new build is expensive in Tokyo. The average second-hand apartment in the 23 wards is 25.9 years old and trades at ¥1,379,600 per square metre. New build sits in a different price bracket, and that gap closes at the first resale: it is the new-build premium, a surcharge that exists only until someone has lived there.

Criterion	New build (shinchiku)	Second hand (chuko)
Price per square metre	The highest in the market	¥1,379,600 on average across the 23 wards
Resale discount	Steep from the day you move in	Already absorbed by the previous owner
Opening charges	Low, with increases planned from the start	At their real level, visible in the association accounts
Assessed value, therefore taxes	High	Low on an older structure
What you can inspect	A floor plan and a model	The building, its accounts, its past works, its neighbours
Timeline	Often 12 to 24 months of construction	Two to three months to handover

Two dates filter the second-hand market

• June 1981: the shin taishin (shin-taishin, new earthquake resistance standard) applies to building permits issued from that date. Below it, insurance, resale and peace of mind all become issues. Our article on the 1981 seismic standard explains how to check the permit date rather than the completion date.
• 1990: the threshold applied by the few lenders open to foreign borrowers, and the one that governs the residual value of the structure thirty years out.

Towers deserve their own arithmetic: markedly higher charges per square metre, a tax treatment reshaped by three recent reforms, and low yields. We costed it in our article on Tokyo tower mansions. For the general trade-off between the two markets see new or second-hand property in Japan, and for condominium vocabulary and due diligence, our guide to buying an apartment in Japan.

Paying: what a non-resident can finance, and how the money arrives

This is where foreign buyers lose the most time for want of a clear answer. Here it is.

Japanese mortgages are not available from abroad

A Japanese home loan is reserved for people who both live and are employed in Japan. A buyer living in Europe, North America or Australia pays cash, price plus costs. A handful of banks described as foreigner-friendly do lend under strict conditions, but they almost always require residence, a stable status and job tenure, and a loan granted to a non-resident tops out around 50 to 70% of value. The real conditions, bank by bank, are in our article on mortgages in Japan for foreigners.

One corollary is never to be lost sight of: buying property in Japan grants no right of residence. Ownership and visa are unrelated, as our article can a foreigner buy a house in Japan without a visa sets out. If your plan is to move, build the status first and the property second.

Moving the funds is the real critical path

An international transfer of ¥40M to ¥80M is not an ordinary payment. Three things matter.

• The channel: the seller's account is Japanese and settlement happens on the day of final signature. Depending on the route, allow one to five business days, plus your home bank's review of an unusual amount.
• The cost of conversion: on ¥42M, one percentage point on the exchange rate is about €2,600, more than the land registration lawyer's entire fee. Compare the rate offered, not just the flat charges.
• Supporting documents: have the source of funds and the sale contract ready. Movements above ¥1M trigger reporting on the Japanese side, and your European bank will ask for the same in the other direction.

Our article on funding a Japanese purchase from abroad walks through that circuit, and opening a Japanese bank account as a foreigner explains when a local account becomes necessary, in particular to receive rent and pay the annual taxes.

The weak yen is a standing discount

A buyer holding euros or dollars pays materially less today than a decade ago for the same yen price. That is the currency effect, and it cuts both ways on resale. We measure it in our article on the weak yen and Japanese property.

Buying from abroad: the real week-by-week timeline

A Tokyo purchase run from Europe or North America takes eight to fourteen weeks in practice, from first shortlist to handover, with no compulsory trip. Here is the sequence, with the delays we actually observe.

Week	Step	What can delay it
W0	Budget fixed, currency channel opened, source-of-funds documents prepared	Your bank's review of an unusual amount
W1 to W3	Shortlisting, remote viewings (naiken, naiken) by video call, checks on the building and the association accounts	A seller who refuses a filmed viewing
W4	Written offer, the kaitsuke ireisho (kaitsuke依頼書), without firm commitment	A counter-offer, or a faster buyer
W5	Explanation of important matters (juyo jiko setsumei, jūyō jikō setsumei) by a licensed agent, by video, then contract signature and deposit (tetsukekin, 手付金) of 5 to 10%	Translation of the file, to be requested in advance
W5 to W8	If you do not sign in person: power of attorney (ininjo, ininjō) and a signature certificate issued by your consulate, sent as originals by post	Consular lead times, two to four weeks in some countries
W8 to W10	Settlement (kessai, kessai): balance transferred, transfer of title registered by the shiho shoshi, keys handed over	Time zones and value dates on the transfer
W10 to W14	Letting management set up, insurance taken out, tax representative appointed	Nothing, if the manager was chosen before settlement
+3 to 6 months	Acquisition tax notice, then the first fixed asset tax the following year	A correspondence address left blank

The three documents that stall a deal, and how to get ahead of them

• The signature certificate replaces the registered Japanese seal when you are not a resident. It is issued by your consulate, in person, and it is almost always what stretches the timeline. Request it the day you sign the contract, not afterwards. Our article on the hanko and property purchase explains the exact equivalence.
• The juyo jiko setsumei is the central legal document: easements, condominium status, zoning restrictions, known incidents. It is read before signature, never during. We take it apart in our guide to the juyo jiko setsumei.
• The remote viewing needs preparation: ask for a continuous walkthrough, not photographs. Our method is set out in viewing a Japanese property remotely.

If you would rather delegate the coordination, the checks and the interpreting, our buying support service covers the whole journey through to handover, and the first exchange is in writing, with no commitment.

Common mistakes when buying an apartment in Tokyo

Mistaking the asking price for the market

Asking prices have outpaced agreed prices for several quarters. Treating a portal as a barometer leads to overpaying. The useful benchmark is the agreed price per square metre in the ward, not the listing next door.

Buying the floor area and ignoring the reserve fund

Two identical apartments in two different buildings do not carry the same holding cost. An under-funded reserve, the situation of 36.6% of Japanese condominiums, ends in a special levy sooner or later. The fund balance and the works plan are read before the offer, not after.

Believing the purchase prepares a move

Ownership grants no right of residence. A purchase made with that expectation rests on an expensive misunderstanding: the visa is built separately, through work, a company or family.

Planning short-stay letting as if this were Osaka

In Tokyo, minpaku (minpaku, licensed short-stay letting) is capped at 180 nights a year, and several wards add their own restrictions by weekday or by zone. What works in Osaka does not transfer. Our articles on the 180-night minpaku licence and on the Osaka tokku minpaku zone spell out the difference.

Underestimating non-resident taxation

Rent earned in Japan is taxable in Japan, with withholding in certain cases and an annual filing. Frame this before the purchase, not at the first rent payment: rental income tax for non-residents.

Overlooking flood exposure in the east

The most affordable wards are also, in part, the most exposed to the rivers of eastern Tokyo. Zoning can be checked for free before you offer, as our article on natural hazards and Japanese property explains.

Conclusion: three numbers are enough to decide

Buying an apartment in Tokyo in 2026 comes down to three figures. The average agreed price across the 23 wards is ¥1,379,600 per square metre, which is ¥79.41M (€490,185) for 57.6 m². Costs add 5 to 6% at most, deferred acquisition tax included. And the net yield on a Tokyo unit lands around 2%, against double that or more elsewhere in Japan.

Those three numbers all say the same thing: Tokyo is a market for capital preservation and liquidity, in the only large Japanese city whose population is growing. It is an excellent choice if you want an asset that resells easily and a tenant who is always available. It is a poor choice if you are chasing cash flow, and a very poor calculation if you are hoping for residence rights.

The next step is straightforward: fix your bracket using the table above, test a real property in the yield simulator, compare what the same capital buys elsewhere in our listings, and check the full method in our guide to buying property in Japan. If you want your plan read before you commit to anything, the first exchange is in writing, with no commitment.

Frequently asked questions

Can a foreigner buy an apartment in Tokyo?

Yes, with no restriction on nationality or residence. Japan does not limit foreign ownership of property, including for non-residents. You acquire full freehold title to the unit and its share of the land, exactly as a Japanese buyer would.

What is the average price of an apartment in Tokyo in 2026?

In the first quarter of 2026, second-hand apartments sold for an average of ¥79.41M (€490,185) across the 23 wards, for 57.6 m² and an average age of 25.9 years, or ¥1,379,600 per square metre. Asking prices on the portals run well above agreed prices.

What is the minimum budget to buy an apartment in Tokyo?

Around ¥20M to ¥25M (€123,000 to €154,000) before costs buys a 20 to 25 m² concrete studio built in the 1980s, within a ten minute walk of a station, in the north or east of the city. Below that the supply becomes very thin.

What are the closing costs on a Tokyo apartment?

At most 6% of the price, and often under 5.5%. On a ¥42M unit, expect about ¥2,006,000 at settlement (agency commission, registration, land registration lawyer, stamp duty, insurance, tax proration) and about ¥300,000 of acquisition tax three to six months later.

Can I get a Japanese mortgage to buy in Tokyo?

Japanese home loans are reserved for people who both live and work in Japan. A buyer based abroad pays cash. The rare loans granted to non-residents cap out around 50 to 70% of value and come with strict conditions.

What rental yield can I expect on a Tokyo apartment?

Gross yields commonly run between 3 and 5% depending on the ward, and the net yield after charges, taxes, management and vacancy often lands near 2%. Tokyo is a liquidity and capital preservation market rather than a cash flow one.

Do I need to travel to Japan to buy an apartment in Tokyo?

No. Viewings are done by video call, the explanation of important matters too, and signature can be handled by power of attorney with a signature certificate from your consulate. Allow eight to fourteen weeks from shortlist to handover.

Does buying an apartment in Tokyo give me a visa?

No, under no circumstances. Property ownership grants no right of residence in Japan. Residence status depends on employment, business activity or a family tie, and is built entirely independently of a purchase.